Pre-Conference Workshop by Nilima Chowdhury¹
¹ University of Lausanne, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
TIME: Monday, 13 July, 10.30 – 16:30
Location: Room 1
Session: Pre-Conference Workshop 1
Abstract
Numerous empirical studies have traced the contours and everyday practices of neoliberal selfhood. The neoliberal self is an entrepreneurial subject and purposefully cultivates a range of psychological qualities such as positivity, flexibility, busy-ness, resilience, personal initiative, and self-confidence. However, this constant work on the self also produces an anxious, insecure subject whose biggest fear is to be left behind because they are never “good enough”. The promise of the ‘good life’ and the fear of failing together act as affective fuel for the production and persistence of neoliberal self-making practices. Thus, collectively developing new self-practices necessitates a methodology that (at least temporarily) disconnects us from these affective pulls and pushes, a methodology that engages the whole, embodied person: their identities, self-narratives, values, and fundamental connectedness. In this workshop entitled “The Game of Sayn”, I invite participants to playfully experiment with ways of de-neoliberalizing ourselves. We will use arts-based tools and methods – narrative, performance, voice/ sound – underpinned by a critical psychological perspective to explore various dimensions of being-in-the-world affected and shaped by the dominant neoliberal logic, e.g., time/ temporality, embodiment/ corporeality, and relationality. Sayn is a term I coined to denote ways of being that are devalued or undermined by neoliberal capitalism: community, connection, resonance, ambiguity, playing ‘the long game’, practices of care. There are no pre-defined outcomes in The Game of Sayn; it is an attempt to re-capture ‘sayn spaces’ in the everyday.